My Internet Notebook

In naming Ed Zander the 2005 CEO of the year, MarketWatch sums up the three/four things Zander did at Motorola.

• Instead of performing major surgery, Zander spent his first months on the job meeting customers and workers.
• create a more open “executive branch” in which senior personnel were less isolated from each other and from the rank and file. A big believer in full-throttle debate, Zander encouraged executives to develop ideas — and then to defend them vigorously.
• Zander also believed the company needed to do a better job on nuts-and-bolts tasks. He sped up efforts to streamline development, get products to market faster and break down organizational walls. No more individual fiefdoms.
• With those goals in mind, Zander also put in place a variety of tools to measure performance and tied executive bonuses to the success of the entire company. Everybody would row in the same boat.

Aren’t they strikingly simple things? But only people who can vigoriously execute on them can succeed.

Big technology business news in the last few days seem to signal an increased level of enthusiasm from American technology companies to invest in and move more jobs to Inida.

There is AMD’s announced chip factory in India worth $3,000,000,000.

There is the Intel announcement of $1 billion in additional investment in Intel India R&D facility and venture funds.

There is the JP Morgan’s plan to hire 4,500 heads in India in the next 24 months, which is is currently hiring between 300 and 400 graduates a month and plans to have a total workforce in India of 9,000 by the end of 2007.

To give credit where it is due, I think India, over the last couple of years, has developed a good reputation / relationship / PR with western nations in a drive to become the largest democracy in the world, with its respect for IP etc.

While China still attracts a fair amount of foreign investment these days, recent events (such as CNOOC’s unsolicitated bids for Unocal) seem to have left a bad impression among the western powers.

Even a nation needs a PR program!